This week I am going to start my next project! Dave's blanket is neeeeearly finished, but I ran out of yarn last night - always the way! So there is another ball of Ecru on the way, so I can do the last bit before the final dark border. In the mean time though, I will be working away on the Isle of Wight until the weekend and needed something to take with me. So I have found a new pattern for a plush, and went to buy the yarn this morning!

Being massively unorganised, as always, I only thought of doing this last night, so I went to my local Hobbycraft store to indulge - I found something really cool and had to buy it!

The Women's Institute Soft & Silky is a 100% acrylic yarn, available only from Hobbycraft stores (and their online shop). There are loads of different ranges available, but Soft & Silky comes in a beautiful spectrum of colours - I bought them all, bar two!

It comes in 100g balls, is 4ply, and is one of the softest acrylic yarns I have come across. Not even a hint of scratchiness, and it feels really high quality. Each ball costs £3, and according to the packaging "a minimum of 5p from the sale of this item will be given to the National Federation of Women's Institutes" - so thats' nice. You can read more about the Women's Institute here.

I'm pleased with this find though, and hopefully it will work well into my new project. I don't want to link to the pattern or anything at the moment, so watch this space.

Thursday, 23 July 2015

From left to right: a shield bug in our garden, Felix's last day at Superdrug Weymouth!, one of the lupins that Dave grew from seed has started flowering, Winchester Cathedral, pretty colours in one of our borders, sunburn-watching in Weymouth town centre, my coreopsis looks awesome at the moment, candle burning in the evenings, and a beautiful birds nest we found in the garden.

Sunday, 19 July 2015

You will all have seen my recent snapshots of the baby blanket that I have been making for our friends Rich and Sarah, for the arrival of their first child! I'm pleased to say that on the 6th July, Ruben came into the world (and he's absolutely gorgeous!).

I finished Ruben's blanket last week and have some photos to share - I'm really pleased with how it's turned out!

A little wonky, but I love it

The pattern I used is the As-We-Go Stripy Blanket by Hannah Davis, and it's beautifully written. I learnt a few new stitches along the way as well, so that was great fun! Absolutely in love with the star stitch!

I opted to use a really funky yarn, and chose to work with Lang Yarns Baby Cotton, which comes in some absolutely gorgeous colours. Rich and Sarah didn't find out what gender Ruben was going to be, so I worked in rainbow. I think it works really well! The colours I used are 0016 (lime green), 0116 (green), 0078 (turquoise), 0075 (orange), 0060 (red), 0018 (dark green), 0014 (yellow), 0080 (purple), 0085 (pink), and 0006 (dark blue).

One of my fav colour sections

This project only took me 20 days to complete, which is partly due to it being a baby blanket, but I would love to make a few size one at some point...maybe when Ruben gets a bit bigger!

The pattern called for a ripply edge as an idea, but I wanted to keep things simple and opted for three rows of sc instead. I fell in love with the turquoise yarn so worked two rows of that, and finished with the green. I think it worked really well and ties everything in together nicely. I think it would probably also look really good with a bobble stitch border, as that would make a thicker band, but thats something to try on another day!

So what remains to say - I am still working on finishing the mammoth project that is Dave's blanket, and I won't do anything else until it's done now. It's really close to being finished, and it's been good to have a small break, but I need to crack back on with it now. Can't wait to see it done!

I haven't updated on our garden in months (since the 19th April!) so lots has been going on since then! Dave and I cleared another load of shrubs from the bottom bed by the lawn, which I don't have progress pictures for. However, I can tell you that at the end of May, I started planting up the border around our small lawn section, and we also got a bird bath for the same area. It ended up looking like this...

Bird bath and Gardineas

Tiny Salvias, Cosmos, and Coreopsis

These plants have all filled out really nicely now - I absolutely adore the Coreopsis!

Today we have spent literally all day in the garden doing weeding, hedge trimming, and planting up some new flowers...this is how everything looks now!

This is the same bed, as above =)

Summer colours!

Bird bath area is filling out nicely

Working the jazzy colours!

It's looking so warm and summery now, I love it. There are still a few gaps I want to fill in this bed, and ideally I want some yellows, but all in all, it's looking awesome and I'm really pleased.

Another job today - Dave bought some willow canes and built a little structure to grow his grape vines on. We have moved one vine up to the bed and are going to see how it settles before taking the other one up there (just incase of disasters!). It looks good though...

Hopefully it will settle in ok! Fingers crossed, because they're lovely looking plants and we hope to get some grapes in a couple of years time, when they've matured!

One last bonus for today - whilst trimming some of the larger bushes in the garden, we came across this beautiful old birds nest!

There were blackbirds flying in and out of that bush last year, and at a guess it's a blackbird nest but I'm not certain. I don't even know how long it has been in there. Hopefully the birds will come back and build another one day though!

So it's been a super productive day. We are now sat outside, just chilling in the sunshine. In a little while I'm going to make some dinner and we can collapse for the evening. Hooray for productive days!

Thursday, 16 July 2015

From left to right: pretty roses outside our bedroom window, Dave got a new hedge trimmer to play with, a rather dreary but humid day in Weymouth, blanket edging, Goat Simulator, tadaaaaaaaaa, I visited Ben on Tuesday and took his birthday pressies over, another blanket angle, and the light stand leg that everyone is falling over, despite all the hazard tape...

Friday, 10 July 2015

From left to right: my beautiful wrapped lucha swap parcel, lovely blue skies - perfect for a BBQ, half of a massive hailstone that came down in the enormous storms we had on Friday night, stitching in the sun, my extremely generous swap partner sent me the most amazing gifts, we visited Ruben for the first time and got to give him the giraffe babygrow we bought him, Owen took me for a surprise lunch, blanket zigzags, and my old work fishing rod vs my new work fishing rod...simple pleasures!

Saturday, 4 July 2015

It took me ages to send out my lucha swap this month, but thankfully so was my swap partner...and today, after a pretty rubbish start, I was lucky to receive my happy mail from Fiona!

What a wonderful surprise!

My parcel was from Fiona, who as it turns out, has been extremely generous! I could not have even imagined the lovely gifts that she has sent me - have a look!

Wow!

Fiona sent me not just one, but FIVE books (My Family and Other Animals; Skellig: The Humans; Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?; and Cloud Atlas), lots of yummy mango Yankee candle melts, sweeeeeeeeeets, summery music, a bird whistle, awesome sunnies, handmade starfish and a handstitched narwhal! My boyfriend is a narwhal fan, so it will be added to the collection!

I'm not sure if Fiona knew that I am an avid reader, but if she did, this is the most amazing parcel for me. It really put a smile on my face, on a rubbish day, so thank you for all of these wonderful gifts. And a big thank you to all of the amazing Lucha Club ladies (and gents)!

Some insanely hot weather this week...and rain too. It's been a mixed bag!

25th June - 2nd July

From left to right: a teeny tiny moth in the garden, closeup on my catherine wheel stitches in the baby blanket, Dorchester high street, my first ever bread and butter pudding, wet market stalls, Jurassic Park, awesome blanket progress, a very wet photographer, and starting a baking hot day with a blackberry and raspberry cooler!